


Hitch

by professorflo



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26129494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/professorflo/pseuds/professorflo
Summary: Severus and Hermione are happily married with a baby on the way. But something is wrong, and neither of them have any idea what.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 63
Kudos: 119





	1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, just having a play.

For everyone waiting for me to update my other WIP, I'm not giving up on it! Just been busy (and stressed) so my muse hasn't been kind.

All opinions in this fic are those of the characters (Severus I'm looking at you!) and are appropriate to the context of the storyline (and Severus being Severus) rather than a reflection on my own thoughts and beliefs.

* * *

It all started not long after she realised she was pregnant. The vague sense of unease that had begun to bloom within her quickly developed into the knowledge that something was very wrong indeed.

Severus hadn’t believed her at first, not even when two light bulbs had blown within minutes. It was only when the appliances started to go haywire, and he’d run into their small utility room to find her covered in suds from the washing machine whose door had unlocked mid-cycle, that he conceded that it was unlikely to be mere coincidence.

Always the master of understatement.

Of course, the 18th century cottage in the Yorkshire Dales they’d moved into after their marriage around six months ago needed a lot of updating. They’d spent most of their savings on buying the place – she still wasn’t sure how they’d managed to buy it outright, not with the jobs they had – and they were reluctant to spend the rest when there was a baby on the way.

She couldn’t even remember what had led them to buy such a place so out of the way, a walk and then two buses away from the town where they both worked. Neither of them had ever bothered to drive, although her husband was currently in the process of learning, as Hermione hadn’t been thrilled with the idea of being stuck out in the middle of nowhere waiting for an ambulance if and when anything happened.

If only either of their parents had been alive. She was sure her parents would have paid for her to learn, had they not died in an accident when she was in her last year at school. Severus’ mother was a dab hand at DIY when she’d been alive, he’d told her, always managing to patch up their old house and making do with very little, and her father had enjoyed getting his hands dirty too, although he’d been able to afford to pay someone else to do it for him. 

She tried not to think of her parents often. It hurt too much. She could remember her childhood well, up to the age of eleven. After that it got hazy, and the few memories of her parents she had as a teenager seemed to revolve around Christmas and the summer holidays. Even more bizarre was the image of owls that accompanied any thoughts of more recent birthdays, hers or theirs. She didn’t let her lack of memories bother her though. She vaguely remembered being told it was a natural effect of the overwhelming grief she’d felt at their deaths. She couldn’t even recall who’d told her that either.

The lack of clear memories wasn’t the real reason why she avoided mention or thought of them though. It was the guilt. She couldn’t even understand what she had to feel guilty about. Perhaps it was not being with them when they had died, or the fact she could barely remember half her life with them. Either way, the merest thought of them crushed her with remorse so intense she tried her best to evade them.

The most Hermione allowed herself was the vague regret that they couldn’t be here to share in the joy of their unborn grandchild. They’d tried so long and hard to conceive Hermione herself, and her mother had never been able to carry another child to term after her. Hermione’s maternal grandmother had had the same problem, and she’d been worried that she would have the same issue.

In the end it had taken less than six months to conceive. Severus had been as desperate as she was to have a child, and they’d spend those months shagging like rabbits. No wonder, really, when she considered they’d waited to have sec until the night of their wedding. She couldn’t remember who suggested holding off, neither was she sure why they’d agreed to wait, considering how desperate they both were by the time they consummated their new marriage. It wasn’t like she’d been a virgin either.

The strange thing was that she couldn’t remember ever finding him particularly attractive before they’d got married, not that the details of their relationship before their wedding were too clear. It didn’t matter to her though. They were married, in love, and about to have a baby.

Life was perfect.

* * *

Life was most definitely not perfect.

He hated his job. He hated working in the book shop, despite the 25% discount that they both took shameful advantage of. He hated that he’d pissed his education away, and that he wasn’t qualified for any of the sort of jobs he could imagine himself doing, such as a chemist, or a researcher.

The fact that Hermione had done the same only made it worse. He honestly couldn’t understand how someone so clearly as intelligent as she was hadn’t continued into higher education, but instead was working as a receptionist at one of the larger hotels in town.

When he’d asked her what she’d done before they had got married she’d just shrugged and told him, “Something similar, I guess.” Strange that she was now suddenly planning extra studies around her job and the upcoming prospect of having a baby. Where she’d suddenly got the drive from he wasn’t sure, but he’d been eyeing up some of the leaflets she’d got, and enrolled himself on an adult chemistry courses. It would hopefully give him the skills he needed to take some Open University chemistry courses as a possible means of finding himself better suited to his interests.

It wasn’t just his job that was the problem. Why they’d chosen to live so far away from their jobs when neither of them could drive was a mystery, one that they never managed to discuss. They’d moved in the same day as their wedding, and the state of the place had made him wonder what the two of them had been on when they’d signed the contracts.

The house itself was fairly sound, although extremely dated. Everything in it was horribly old fashioned and when he’d started redecorating he’d found more than one set of shelves or table that seemed to be held together with nothing but luck. They’d forgotten to contact the gas and electricity companies before they moved in too. It had taken a couple of days to get it sorted, given that they had no electricity and therefore no way to make a call without going down to the phone box in the nearest village.

There was an ancient rotary phone in the hall that had seen better days, but when they’d eventually set up a phone line they’d decided not to get internet. Not that either of them had had any real knowledge of how to use a computer. That was surely understandable in someone his age, but Hermione had had not a clue either. She’d had a bad time at work until she’d picked up the hang of the ‘flashy monster’ she had to use. She could only remember ever having used a couple of programmes for which her father had known the correct file pathways in MS-DOS. Neither of them had wanted a computer in the house, nor one of those fancy mobiles which you could apparently now send written messages in. Severus couldn’t see the point, not when they had a perfectly good telephone at home.

There had been plenty of other problems in the first few weeks, many of them silly little things that they’d forgotten to buy for the house, such as an electric kettle or a toilet plunger. Why they’d bought a whisk broom instead of a hoover, he wasn’t sure, although it had become a bit of a running joke that he would tease Hermione about using to fly to work on like a witch. For some reason the idea seemed to make her feel queasy, which only made him laugh harder.

It had taken a couple of months to get the house how he wanted it, but it had been so difficult in parts that he just hadn’t been able to get past his irritation and fall in love with it. It just didn’t feel like home. He didn’t like the harsh electric lights, and had bought candles to place around the house which he often used instead, unless they were reading, when they used the small table lamp which gave off a much more comforting glow.

He didn’t like the noise any of the appliances made. He wasn’t a fan of the TV either, although Hermione had insisted on buying one. She’d found a couple of series that seemed to remind her of something she’d watched when she was younger – The Worst Witch, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, both of which he couldn’t stand. The magic in either of them didn’t make any sense to him, and he’d told her so.

It might not yet feel like home, but he was hoping it would by the time the baby arrived. He just wished he could shake off the sense of wrongness – constantly feeling like he’d forgotten something. He even doubted their relationship some days. As much as he loved Hermione, and was sure to love their child - and hopefully the hordes of children they had planned, he sometimes looked at her and wondered what had ever possessed him to marry a girl like her, 18 years his junior, and as bright and kind as he was surly and irritable. She was far too good for him, he knew, but for some reason she seemed as enamoured of him as he was of her, so he wasn’t about to complain.

Every day, as he woke with her in his arms he would tell himself he was the luckiest guy in the world, and try to ignore the little voice that whispered that he was too lucky, that someday soon his luck would run out and she would see him for the worthless creature he was and leave him. She deserved better, both in her choice of husband and in the life they were building together. There was something about her – he somehow knew she should have been destined for greater things – to make a difference in some way, yet she was stuck with him in some run down cottage in the middle of nowhere. Still, she seemed happy to be there, with him, and they had both been over the moon when she’d found out she was pregnant, so he tried his best daily to hide his worries.

But then the strange occurrences had started. He’d tried to pass it off as faulty electrics, but as her pregnancy progressed towards the end of her first trimester, the incidents also began to increase, and he could no longer ignore what was happening.

He had called an electrician when Hermione had been at work, but he’d been unable to find anything wrong. It was Sod’s Law that of course nothing had happened when he was there, and after hours of testing every appliance and trip, the bemused man left, shaking his head at the odd man with the old fashioned house and an overactive imagination.

Twenty minutes after Hermione had returned, however, the cooker had tripped. He’d been trying to sear the pork medallions for their supper while Hermione ranted about a particularly irritating customer that day. It had occurred to him then, as he stared morosely down at the cooling fat congealing in the pan, that the electrics never seemed to blow when she wasn’t there. Neither had there been any problems before she’d become pregnant.

He’d gone to the small library in town over several lunch breaks to surreptitiously study the limited number of books on pregnancy after browsing the ones he could find at work, but had found nothing. He’d even braved the horror that was the World Wide Web. He’d had to resort to asking one of the members of staff to help him work out what to do – a young girl with pink hair and a pitying look in her eyes as she showed him how to search and move back and forward between pages. She scurried away quickly at his irritated scowl when she began to pry into what he was wanting to search for.

Growing frustrated with the slow interface (why in Merlin’s name were the letters on the keyboard laid out in such an stupid order?), the garish colours and lack of relevant results on a page with the irritating name of ‘Yahoo!, he was just about to give up moving down the list of results that had provided him with exactly nothing. Irritated with the failure of the web to provide answers, and feeling vindicated in his dislike of all things more technological than a lightbulb, he clicked on a link that seemed to promise content inane enough to harass the librarian about the ineffectual service they offered.

Dragging the side bar down to move the page in search of some choice phrase to throw at the hapless member of staff he suddenly paused.

He read the paragraph that had caught his eye twice before scoffing at the absurdity of it.

That didn’t stop him from going back to the top of the article – if you could call such badly punctuated trip an article – and, after checking round to make sure no one could see what he was looking at, read the whole thing.

“Utter nonsense,” he said to himself as he stalked towards the exit, not forgetting to gripe at the lady at the desk that they really ought to get a better copy of the web if they were going to continue charging people to access it.

“What sort of imbecile would write such drivel?” he thought as he watched the darkening landscape fly past on the bus journey towards home.

“If sure there’ll be a perfectly good explanation for all of this,” he thought nervously, watching the light above their heads flickering as Hermione flung her arms happily round him moments after he’d stepped in through the front door.

“I’m too old to believe in that sort of nonsense!” he told himself as he carefully lifted a weeping Hermione off the bathroom floor where minutes ago she’d been hovering over the toilet bowl, and carried her over the glass shards of yet another light bulb.

“I guess the warts make sense, but what sort of school is named after a pig?” he pondered as he eyed up a particularly hairy-faced crone across the bookshop till. “She would make a perfect hag,” he sneered to himself as a copy of Macbeth in the classics section caught his eye. “’Double, double toil and trouble,’” he whispered to himself as he gently ran a finger down the spine. “Double trouble sounds exactly right.”

Later that week he found himself standing outside one of those ‘new age’ type shops, peering in through the window at the displays of overpriced candles, piles of incense and joss sticks and books with titles such as ‘Wicca for Beginners’ and ‘Wiccan Book of Herbal Spells’. He snorted in disgust. “Herbal Spells? Whoever heard of such a stupid idea? Surely even the biggest dunderhead knows that spells are done with a wand and ‘herbs’ are for brewing with.”

The dumpy woman behind the counter, clad in an odd combination of loose fitting, gaudily-coloured clothes, set off with a number of strangely shaped pendants and with a shawl draped over her shoulders, was most definitely not what he thought a witch should look like. The counter was close enough to the front of the shop that he could clearly see the boxes of sparkling crystals labelled ‘protects against negativity’, ‘opens hearts to love and promotes peace’ and other preposterous claims.

“Ridiculous,” Severus muttered absently, “very few crystals have any intrinsic magical value,”

All in all, this was not what he had imagined when he’d read the article, and he wondered, not for the first time, whether his behaviour was not becoming slightly irrational. He scowled at the thought.

He had been standing there, glaring into the shop for long enough that the woman, who had been engrossed in weaving various coloured strands across a circle, had noticed someone at the window. She looked up with a smile which froze on her face as she took in his fierce glower. Growing pale, she stood and turned to one of the stands behind her, hurriedly rearranging several items.

With one final sneer, Severus turned from the window and stalked away, his long black coat whipping around his legs. Behind him in the shop, the woman peered back towards the window through a bejewelled mirror at the back of the stand. Realising the severe-looking man with the shadowy, roiling aura had left she walked cautiously to the door and pulled it open. She glanced each way down the street, she sighed in relief as she when he was nowhere to be seen. Shutting and locking the door, she flipped the sign to closed, and made her way into the back of the shop to make herself a cup of tea.


	2. 2

Thanks for all the lovely reviews. They are all very much appreciated. I must say that some of you have caught on to some of what is happening, but I seem to still have some secrets. 

This one is short and hopefully sweet.

* * *

It took her over a week to notice that the incidents had stopped. The excitement of feeling the baby move the first few times had taken up all of her thoughts for several days. The relief she felt upon realising how long it had been since the last time a lightbulb had shattered over her head or appliance had gone haywire was huge, and she could only hope that whatever had been causing it had disappeared permanently.

She couldn't make out that anything had been happening at home when she had not been there. There had also been more than a few incidents at work, leaving her convinced it was something wrong with her. She had been unwilling to say as much to Severus, and had even kept quiet about what had happened at work as well as any at home that she had managed to hide the evidence of before Severus returned home. She'd noticed he'd become fixated with finding out what was causing the electrics to blow up, although he'd been trying to hide his worries from her. The mixture of her pregnancy and the strange occurrences seemed to be making him go slightly potty.

She'd had to hide from him her realisation that the occurrences only seemed to happen when she was feeling particularly emotional or stressed. It was like some sort of… magic. He would surely have thought her mad if she'd told him.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that the incidents seemed to have stopped, she couldn't shake the gut feeling that there was still something desperately wrong. She had the constant feeling that she had forgotten something, or that something was missing. Sometimes she thought about asking Severus if he had any idea of what it could be, but somehow it always slipped her mind.

Getting around was starting to get harder now. She was in her fifth month of pregnancy and her bump seemed to get bigger by the day. She was becoming tired a lot quicker than before, although her boss was being very accommodating, and it was beginning to take a toll on her studies. Luckily she could pick and choose her modules, which were made to be flexible around full time jobs. Very little of the courses were face to face, and currently she was just working on various pieces of coursework.

At least Severus had passed the theory part of his driving test and had a date for his practical booked for two weeks' time. She couldn't wait until she no longer had to walk so far just to ride for ages on the bus to town every day. They'd already been eyeing up a couple of cars that were within their budget, and she was hoping the time and effort saved by driving to and from work would give her back the energy to crack on with her learning.

She been hoping to get her current modules finished by now so she could enrol on new ones and attend the necessary lessons before the baby came, but with being so tired all the time she was getting behind. She wished she'd had the drive to work so hard at her studies when she'd been younger, but clearly she hadn't.

She could barely even remember her secondary school, let alone any of the lessons she'd done. Vague recollections of friend's faces and old fashioned classrooms were all she could recall. They couldn't have been close friends anyway, for she hadn't kept in contact with any of them. She was sure the school had been a private one, for she didn't know of any state schools that looked anything like the few images she could dredge up of mullioned windows, ancient wooden desks and rows of bookshelves holding leather-bound books. Just the thought of all that information made her sigh with longing.

She sometimes wondered what Severus' own schooling had been like. He was in the same boat as her, having left school with nothing either, although she couldn't understand why, for he was ridiculously smart, and just as bookish as her. It was strange how they had both ended up with no qualifications. She'd not even had a job until after they'd got married. They'd both had to look for one as soon as they'd moved in to their new home. She kept meaning to ask where he'd gone to school, and what he'd done before he met her, but she always forgot. It wasn't really all that important anyway.

It had taken him some time to realise that the electrics only went haywire when Hermione was feeling particularly emotional. Of course, with the pregnancy hormones coursing through her, her moods could swing from one extreme to the other in the blink of an eye. Strangely enough, the occurrences had suddenly stopped around the time that the baby had moved for the first time, although it had taken him a couple of weeks to be convinced that they were gone for good.

* * *

He'd not been able to find any more information that could explain what had been happening. He'd even gone back to the library and forced himself to use the web again, but the article he'd found had vanished. Frustrated, he'd even taken the doctor aside at the women's clinic they'd attended for Hermione's first scan, to ask whether they knew about this happening to any other pregnant women.

She'd looked at him like he was potty, but ten minutes later had been eyeing him nervously when the ultrasound had malfunctioned before she'd had a chance to get more than a quick look, enough to be fairly confident that there were no obvious problems. Unfortunately there was no other ultrasound room available, so they'd had to wait until the next available slot. Finding a time when they were both free that tied up with an available appointment had proved tricky, so they'd ended up waiting for the next scheduled scan.

By that point the last incident had been a few weeks previous, and, despite his fears, the scan went perfectly. They had been enjoyed to find out they were having a girl. Severus hadn't really though much about it before, but now he could just imagine a smaller version of Hermione to love and care for. He could only hope that she was cursed with as few of his features as possible. He wouldn't want any child of his to go through the bullying he had for his looks during his school years, although he would of course make sure that by the time any of the many children he hoped to have went to Hogwarts, they'd be more than able to defend themselves.

Something about that thought was strange but before he'd been able to examine it, it had slipped away, and he was left staring at the first photo of this little creature that they had made together, and feeling completely overwhelmed with the love he had for her. He couldn't wait to have more. At least a whole Quidditch team, if Hermione would let him.


	3. 3

Thank you all for being so patient with me. As I'm sure many of you know by now, I am a teacher in the UK. School has gone far beyond the normal level of exhausting since March, and I'm struggling to keep my eyes open long enough to eat in the evenings, so writing is pretty much out at the moment. Even so, I will not be giving up on this or my other WIP. They are in my mind every day, as are you guys.

Thank you for all the kind reviews and comments. They really do make a huge difference, and keep me going when I would otherwise give up. I know I normally try to respond to every comment, but I hope you will all forgive me for not doing so at the moment, as my bed is calling. I have really enjoyed reading some of the theories you all have. Hopefully it won't be too long before the next update. (Next chapter for Missed Chances is half finished too.) xXx

* * *

By the time Hermione was within two weeks of her due date, she was becoming so anxious she wouldn't have been surprised if the baby decided to make an early appearance. With every passing twinge or Braxton Hick she wished more fervently that her mother was still around to advise her. She didn't yet have any close female friends who had been through their own pregnancies to talk to either – their remote cottage had no close neighbours, and she didn't have any particular friends at work who had been through a pregnancy themselves.

In addition, the nagging feeling that she'd had for so long just wouldn't go away, and yet she still had no idea what was wrong. Worst of all, she didn't feel like she could share this with Severus, as he seemed to be having difficulties of his own.

At times he seemed worried or distracted by something he wouldn't share with her. He'd gone from sneering at anything magical or fantastic to being obsessed by it. He'd bought a ridiculous number of books, all of them about witches, wizards or other fairy story monsters, none of them appropriate for children under the age of 5. It would be a long time before any child of theirs would read them.

Severus poured over them in a way that almost frightened her in his intensity, although she had to admit she'd had a good giggle when she'd overheard him calling one of the characters in a book – an ancient-looking wizard with a long white beard and flowing purple robes – a 'right old poofter' and an 'utter bastard' . She'd looked at the picture later herself, and had been surprised at the surge of emotions that overwhelmed her; sadness, grief even. along with an undercurrent of anger. 'Old bastard' indeed, she thought, before closing the book and promptly forgetting about it.

It was not just books on magic he'd brought home. Severus seemed to have found every book on pregnancy the library had to offer, and pored over them for hours until Hermione was sure he must have them memorised. The slightest ache in her back or movement in her stomach had him worried and diagnosing her or their child with all manner of serious problems, and he would normally insist that she lie down or take it easy while he fussed around her.

While on one hand she thought it quite sweet - the foot rubs and neck massages were certainly welcome, as was the way he would do anything to fulfil even the craziest of her cravings, including trying to juice a pumpkin – but the way he hovered over her some days as if she was about to spontaneously combust could be quite irritating. She could only imagine how bad he would have been if he was the one carrying the baby, and he was already so worried about her she found it quite impossible to share her own anxieties.

Then again, it was their first child, so neither of them had any read idea of what to expect. Hopefully it would be a lot easier for all of the subsequent pregnancies they both wished for, as they would have a better idea of what to expect. At least she'd had a relatively easy pregnancy, judging by what she had read and heard from her midwife (despite Severus' ominous diagnosis).

Her morning sickness had been minimal, and had all but disappeared once she'd hit her second trimester. Despite her irritation. Severus had really been a godsend, always willing to massage any of her aches and pains away. They all seemed to melt away under his magical hands.

Despite the relative ease of her pregnancy, as she got closer to her due dates she struggled more and more with everything – her job, her studies, just moving around the house without knocking anything over. She was more tired than usual, and often found it difficult to do more than collapse onto the sofa after work and allow Severus to look after her. She could only be grateful that he had passed his test, and had bought an old red Micra with a dent in the bonnet that she affectionately called Harry. Severus wasn't particularly fond of the car, and he most definitely hated both the colour and the name, but it was all they had been able to afford, what with buying everything for the baby, and the more he protested against the name, the more she used it.

Not needing to use the bus had made their lives ridiculously easier. It now only took them 35 minutes to drive to and from town, rather than the hour and a half minimum it had taken due to the two bus journeys plus any waiting time at bus stops. Food shopping had suddenly become far less of a chore. Carrying several bags of food home on the bus, and then along the winding roads towards their cottage was no one's idea of fun.

Of course, for the last few months, Severus had barely allowed her to lift anything, let alone carry heavy bags home. She'd hated letting him carry so much, while she had nothing but her small handbag to hold, and she would constantly wish the shopping bags lighter for his sake. Severus always pretended that they weighed next to nothing, and although she was always surprised that his hadn't didn't bear the marks of carrying heavy bags for so long, she knew that there was no way they were as light as he tried to make out.

She still wondered what had possessed them to start new jobs so far away from the house they had bought at the same time. They were both intelligent people, and yet somehow it hadn't occurred to them that the daily journey would be so long. They also hadn't counted on the fact that the last bus back to their nearest village was only about thirty minutes after businesses closed for the day, so that they never had the chance to enjoy an evening out, except at the village pub, Luckily the food at the local was excellent, but since they'd had 'Harry' they had enjoyed the odd evening out at a nice restaurant in town.

There was a downside to owning a car. She missed snuggling up to Severus morning and evening, his arms around her while they quietly shared the events of their day, discussed any learning either had been going, or just read their own books in companionable silence. However, on the flip side, they now had far more time at home together.

It was a good thing they both enjoyed each other's company so much, without the need to socialise much, and even though they now had the opportunity, they found they still preferred to spend all their time with the other. They were both unsociable (although Severus was far more so than she), preferring books to people, and the quiet of their cottage or small intimate dinners to being sociable with a group of friends. It was no wonder they hadn't really met anyone yet or made friends besides those they worked with. They were happiest together, in their own little world, just the two of them – soon to be three.

It was time. He'd received the phone call at work to say that Hermione was on the way to the hospital, with her waters having broken at work. Despite struggling for the last month to get around, and with an almost constant ache in her back and feet, she'd refused to stop working until the baby arrived. She had argued that her job didn't require her to be on her feet much, and that her co-workers were making sure she wasn't over-taxing herself.

Severus hadn't liked it, but he had given in with little more than a token protest, not just because he knew he couldn't win, but because with all the work they'd done on their cottage and everything they'd spend on the baby, they would need every penny they could get. Luckily she would still get some money from her maternity pay, but it wasn't as much as she'd been earning, and it only lasted for 39 weeks. They'd then have to decide between finding and paying for childcare if Hermione returned to work, or her staying home to look after their child and losing her job.

He'd rushed to the local hospital, possibly picking up a speeding ticket in his desperation to get there. Upon reaching the hospital and after a sprint down the corridoes to the midwifery unit, he'd was relieved to find that he wasn't too late, and that she was still only in the early stages of labour.

The relief on Hermione's face when he'd appeared was palpable. It was quickly explained to him that the doctors and midwives were having problems with the equipment, and hadn't been able to get the equipment working so they could keep an eye on the baby's heartbeat or Hermione's` blood pressure. They'd also just had to change room as there had also been something wrong with the ceiling lights. Severus barely had any time to worry about the electrics, as only a few moments after he arrived Hermione started to wail as a fresh contraction hit her.

The lights above their heads flickered slightly.

Hurrying to his wife's side and grasping her hand, he could only marvel at her strength as she gripped his fingers so hard that he lost feeling in the tips.

The next few hours had seemed to both fly and drag interminably. Hermione was becoming dilated only slowly, although the midwife had assured them is was quite normal for a first baby to take its time, while subsequent ones were often faster and easier. Severus could only hope so, as he didn't want Hermione to have to go through this every time.

The light had continued to flicker, most particularly when Hermione was experiencing contractions. Hermione had insisted on walking around as much as possible, as this seemed to help with the pain, although Severus had to support her every time a contraction started. The midwives were keeping an eye on their girl's heartrate the old fashioned way, with a stethoscope, and checking up on them every 15 minutes.

Eventually the midwife had declared her dilated enough, around the same time that Hermione's patience with the whole process began to run out, She'd started to snap at Severus when he was trying to help her and had vowed more than once that there was no way that she was going through all this again. The smirk on the midwife's face had told Severus she'd heard such declarations many times and believed none of it. Severus wisely just agreed with whatever Hermione said. For now, at least.

They'd both coaxed her back into a comfortable position on the bed, and the midwife listened to the baby's heartbeat once more, before telling her that she could start pushing. By the time the second hour had passed, Hermione had become extremely frazzled and irritable, shouting at anyone within sight, and alternating between refusing to keep going and crying over her lack of success so far.

"Not long now, Hermione," the midwife said soothingly. "She's almost here."

"Just keep pushing, darling," he'd said, as yet another contraction started. He'd realised his mistake the moment the words had left his mouth. In hindsight, telling a woman who had been pushing for the last two hours, as well as suffering through active labour for an addition 7, was one of the most stupid things he'd done in his life, alongside getting the dark mark and calling Lily a mudblood. He didn't have long to regret his words, as Hermione immediately flew off the handle.

He'd immediately begun to apologise, but she'd wrenched her hand out of his, pushing him roughly away, even as she started shouting. The midwife immediately moved to try and calm her, but Hermione wasn't listening. The light overhead which had been flickering only intermittently up till this point, now flashed on and off rapidly. The monitor, which had been abandoned as useless, also started flashing.

"Darling, please calm down." he begged, as the midwife worriedly pulled the stethoscope out to check the baby's heartrate.

"Don't you tell me to calm down, Severus Snape," she snapped. Her frizzy hair seemed to grow in size and he could have sworn he saw small blue sparks flickering along the strands. "Try pushing out a baby from your arsehole for ten hours, then see how you like it when I tell you to calm down!" She screamed the last, and as she did, a force seemed to hit Severus and knock him backwards. He flew into the wall, banging his head hard before crumpling to the floor.

For a few moments he wasn't sure where he was, or whether it was the lights or his eyes that had gone dark. His whole body felt like it had been run over by a herd of hippogriffs, and he mentally calculated how long it would take to brew something to heal both the bruised shoulder and the sudden agonising pain in his head. Groaning, he rolled over and tried to push himself to his feet.

"Come on, Severus, you've endured far worse than this," he muttered to himself. But the excruciating throbbing all across his head brought him back to his knees, and he bent over, retching hard. It had been so long since he'd been regularly tortured that he'd clearly gone soft.

Employing every scrap of occlumency that he knew, slowly he managed to push the pain into a small corner of his brain that he was almost able to wall off. Eventually he became aware of concerned voices around him, hands pulling at him, trying to coax him up and into a chair. He went along with it just to get them to stop fussing him. All he wanted was a minute or two so that the world would stop spinning around him, and then he could get back to his wife and the imminent birth of his child. The potion could wait.

Shit…! Hermione. His baby. How in Merlin's name had that happened? He managed to prise his eyes fully open, and squinted across the room to see her roaring through one final push as a few of the hospital staff fussed around her. Her grimace turned into a look of relief, and she slumped back against the pillows, exhausted.

Her head turned, searching for him. Their eyes finally met.

Then he remembered. He remembered everything.


	4. 4

Thank you all so much for the lovely reviews, and thank you to everyone following this story and my other WIP for your patience with me. I think this has probably been the longest time between uploading chapters since I started writing fanfics. Again, I'm afraid it's school that's draining my time and my muse. I've never known such a crazy time as this (and I know my school is more stressful than most schools too!). I will try to do better, but everything seems to be all up in the air again at the moment.

Hope you are all keeping safe and well!

* * *

It took a few moments for Hermione to realise that Severus had disappeared. She'd been most wonderfully distracted by the nurse handing her a tiny bundle. Carefully nudging back the blanket, she could make out a sparse covering of dark hair and a pair of blue eyes blinking up at her.

Their daughter. She was so beautiful, red wrinkly face and all. Severus would be glad that she hadn't emerged with his nose, at least not yet.

Suddenly remembering her husband, who mere moments ago had been staring at her with a look of absolute shock on his face, she glanced around to where she'd last seen him, slumped in a chair and being tended to. The chair was still there, but Severus was not. He wasn't in the room at all.

Hermione looked to the nurses who had been fussing around him. One was leaning out of the door, looking both up and down the corridor. She pulled her head back in a few seconds later, a bewildered expression on her face. Turning to the other nurse, she whispered in her ear, before hurrying out.

"Where's Severus? Where's my husband?" Hermione demanded of the nurse that remained.

The nurse hurried over. "Now, Mrs Snape…" she began.

"He should be here! What's happened to him? What's wrong? He would never…"

"I'm sure he will be back in a moment, dear" the nurse replied soothingly.

"No, he…!"

"Please Mrs Snape, you must calm down," interjected the midwife who was still fussing around between Hermione's legs. "You shouldn't stress yourself out. It's not good for either you or the baby."

Hermione glanced down at the child in her arms who was beginning to whimper. She took a deep breath, forcing herself for a moment to push away her fears over the disappearance of her husband. Their daughter grumbled quietly, smacking her lips together and waving one tiny fist in the air. Hermione gently shushed her, running her finger over her daughter's cheek with the lightest touch, before letting her grab it with her own impossibly small ones.

"Hello, little one," she whispered.

"She's beautiful," the nurse said from the side of the bed. "Does she have a name yet?"

"No, not yet." Hermions smiled. "We had some ideas, but we wanted to meet her first before deciding."

The second nurse then returned, drawing Hermione's attention back to Severus' absence and away from her daughter once more.

"Did you find him? Is he ok?" she asked.

The two women exchanged a concerned look before the nurse who had just returned came forward.

"Now, please don't worry yourself, Mrs Snape. I'm sure he won't have gone far after a fall like that. I'm sure it was just the shock of it all." She fussed with the blanket covering Hermione's lap. "I must say, though, I've never seen anyone move quite so fast. Your husband was quite out of sight within a few seconds. I've sent a couple of porters to try and find him."

The midwife interrupted once more. "I'm sure he'll be back in no time. Very few men can cope with the realities of delivery room, and your husband's absence will give you a few quiet minutes to bond with your daughter, just the two of you. Now, let's see if we can get this little one feeding, and then we will get you cleaned up."

Severus had apparated the moment he was in the corridor, caring nothing for whether he was seen or not. He reappeared in the one place he could think of where no one would think to look – the playground where he had first met Lily. His own home at Spinner's End, was half a mile away, but Merlin only knew what state the pace was in after having been left empty for a year. It was also too obvious a place to look for him, and he would need time to think – think and plan.

Some of the details were fuzzy, although he was sure they would come to him before long. He'd banged his head hard enough to jog loose the memories that had been supressed, although now, in hindsight, he could think of at least a few occasions where they had begun to leak through already. It probably would have only been a matter of time, with him at least. He doubted it would take so little as a knock on the head to release Hermione's memories.

It was the benefit of having a well ordered and controlled mind, due to his over use of Occlumency for so many years, as well as being forced by Dumbledore to learn how to protect his mind in the face of an impending memory charm or Obliviate. Of course, they hadn't obliviated them, or he would be missing memories, no matter how well he'd protected his mind.

No, they'd supressed their memories instead, no doubt in case they needed to restore them, although he couldn't think of any situation in which either he or Hermione would integrate quietly back into wizarding society after what had been done to them. Well he certainly wasn't going to now. However, it would be foolish to rush straight in without working out the lie of the land first. If he wasn't careful he would end up back in the same situation and oblivious to what had happened once more. And likely this time they would make sure the charm was strong enough to withstand a blow to the head.

He needed more information. It was impossible to know what to do next without knowing more. What was the current political situation in the wizarding world? How many more had met the same fate as theirs? He'd known he had been not the only one who was refusing to comply, as reports of resistance had been in the papers, although he had not known at the time who else was involved, nor that Hermione had chosen the same course of action as he had.

Severus had not been prepared for them to come for him the way they had. There had been no warning of what would happen if he or the others of the same opinion did not comply. He had been ambushed, taken completely by surprise when doing his weekly shop in the local Tesco. He had always taken advantage of the 24 hour opening times to shop late when there were few people around.

The lack of observers had clearly been useful for his attackers too, and they had jumped him just as he was returning his trolley to one of the bays at the far end of the carpark, metres from where he usually apparated home. They probably hadn't even needed to obliviate any muggles, since they had been so quick to stun him. He hadn't even had chance to draw his wand. He could only wonder what the muggles had thought when they'd found his abandoned trolley full of food.

When he'd awoken, he'd found himself magically bound and silenced. He hadn't recognised the room, and only two of the several inhabitants had been familiar. He hadn't expected to see either of them, but once he recognised Miss Granger, trussed up next to him, the identity of their kidnapper, watching over the preparations and gloating from the side, had made complete sense. Severus had also realised it must have been one and the same person who had been the instigator of the whole debacle. He wouldn't have put it past them to have concocted the whole scheme just to take revenge on Miss Granger.

He'd heard the story, all the Hogwarts staff had, not that Albus had ever confirmed what had happened, and there had been rumours enough amongst the student body that he was surprised the papers had never got wind of it. It was no wonder that their kidnapper hated Miss Granger, (although Severus had privately applauded Miss Grangers actions,) and what he knew of them, he knew that they would be prepared to go to any lengths to do what they felt was justified.

As for why he had been chosen as Miss Granger's future husband, he was sure they would have struggled to find someone more repulsive to her than he. Not only was he her former teacher, one who had treated her most horribly, he was also a former Deatheater and well-known to be one of the most greasy and unattractive wizards around.

He was perhaps a step up from some of the denizens of Knockturn Alley, but in his own dealings with their kidnapper, he hadn't exactly endeared himself to them at any point either. He had been sneakily working against them for much of the time, so there was more than likely an element of getting their own back against him too.

Severus had been sure that their kidnapper couldn't have imagined a more unlikely partner for either of them. Both he and Miss Granger had both been unable to contain their horror as they realised what was about to happen to them. Unfortunately, for their kidnapper at least, they had turned out to be pretty well-suited once they no longer had the memories of their shared past to taint their relationship.

Their shared interests and habits had led to rather pleasant cohabitation, despite the ridiculous choice of house. Their frantic drive to procreate had been a part of the memory charm placed upon them, but they had quickly found themselves to be extremely compatible in the bedroom. Their lives together had been most agreeable, he thought, and he now found himself extremely fond of her, despite knowing that the whole situation had been forced upon them.

Who was he kidding? He loved her. Utterly and completely. The only question was would she feel the same especially once she was fully cognisant of their circumstances, how she'd been forced into such a position with him of all people. Severus was well aware who had got the better end of the stick and he was painfully aware of how unlikely it was that she would feel the same as he did.

Come to think of it, he was pretty sure that they had been forced to marry under wizarding law, after the application of the memory charm and creation of their new muggle identities, helped by a strong confundus on both of them so they did not question the oddities of the wedding. The upshot of having been wed this way was that there was no getting out of it. Wizarding weddings were for life.

Oh gods, Hermione... what was she going to do? What was she going to think – feel, when she realised she'd had her old, nasty professor's child? He had tried valiantly for a few moments to think of her as Miss Granger, rather than by her Christian name, to put some distance between them, as she would surely want to when she realised what had happened. It was no use, however. Considering the amount of time over the past year that he had spent most happily with either his face or his cock between her legs, he just couldn't reconcile 'Miss Granger' with the glorious creature that had most eagerly graced his bed – and his life, for the past year.

He'd never been so happy in all his life as he had living as a muggle, with Hermione by his side and growing round with his child. It had only taken a double kidnapping, memory charms, a forced marriage, and a fertility potion to manage it. In fact, his life was so much better now, he might almost wish he'd never realised what had been done to them.

But what was he to do now? Go back to the hospital, to his wife and new-born daughter, and pretend he had remembered nothing? Or remove the memory charm still on Hermione and see just how quickly she could disappear, despite not ever being able to dissolve their marriage?

Severus had never been so sure in all his life that he was going to hell.


End file.
